CD Projekt RED offers new details on REDengine3, the latest installment of their game engine which will power Cyberpunk 2077 and another unnamed project (presumably the one they will announce on February 5th). They supply a screenshot of a non science-fiction environment (The Witcher 3?), and here's a bit on the new engine:

The REDengine 3 tech is tailor-made to create non-linear and story-driven RPGs with a system that allows to stream and handle fully explorable open-worlds. Cyberpunk 2077, the second project the studio is working on, will have prime examples demonstrating that REDengine 3 is the perfect tool for creating immense universes filled with exciting, nonlinear adventures. The advanced technology of the REDengine 3 makes RPGs comparable to top-shelf shooters, both in terms of game-world presentation and the epic proportions of events that the player is drawn into. The engine is a next-gen-ready solution that begins to blur the line between pre-rendered CGI movies and real time rendered graphics, bringing us closer to the most life-like world ever created in video games. All the state-of-the-art visuals form a living ecosystem allowing the player to be a part of a vivid environment. The new face and body-animation systems implemented in REDengine 3 offer realistic expression of emotions, movie-quality scenes and character interactions.

The technology uses high-dynamic-range rendering with 64-bit precision that ensures superior picture quality with more realistic and precise lighting without losses derived from reduced contrast ratio. A flexible renderer prepared for deferred or forward+ rendering pipelines has a wide array of cinematic post-processing effects, including bokeh depth-of-field, color grading and flares from many lights. A high-performance terrain system allows multiple material layers to be efficiently blended and uses tessellation for the best possible detail. The technology also includes seamless blending between animations and physics along with many more features. The engine uses CD Projekt REDís new version of its proprietary REDkit editor with tools made specifically for RPG game creation. The editor can build complex, branching quests and set them in a free roaming environment with a simplicity not achieved by similar toolsets.

Soulburner wrote on Feb 4, 2013, 05:18:There's a lot of unnecessary and gameplay mechanics, invisible walls, etc.... but it's fun!

Am I a "Rage defender"? Sure, the game needs defending against opinions of people who saw only videos and screenshots of walls.

Fun for you maybe, not so much fun for some of us. I'm a huge id fanboy, went into it on launch day with a $60 preorder and could not have been more disappointed. It's a mishmash of half baked mechanics and features from other games, thrown together in a seemingly directionless production. Rage felt like a series of disconnected parts, some of them were ok but the overall product was just not very cohesive.

I remember playing the first inside area like it was yesterday. The one with the balloons floating outside. I remember looking at the shadows up close, noticing an green hue in them.. I think it had somehow to do with the overal horrible texture resolution. I dunno.

I also remember the constant, immersion breaking horror of terrible, low-res textures. You walk past what seems to be a damaged couch, but the textures are so horribly bad.. your brain just doesn't accept it as such immediately. Same goes for all the other objects, like chairs, posters, tables. The enemies stood out in unrealistic fashion, because they were the only ones with a tad better textures.

These flaws ripped me out of the immersion every single time. I was absolutely disgusted by it.

The patch did fix the pop-in textures but no, not entirely. Maybe I'm more susceptible to notice it than you.

Then there was this area in and around a train station or something? In the shells of a city. I almost physically felt the punches of the horrific ugliness of the textures -- everywhere! I remember standing at a spot that looked beautiful in a pre-release screenshot, but looked so.. so bland and horrible for real.

Ugh. Just so horrible low res. Pretty textures in the distance, granted, but this was an FPS.

I do not see texture loading when quickly looking around with my mouse. The release date problems are long gone. If you see texture loading in Rage on your PC today, your PC has a problem or you are a cyborg. Static shadows? Ok. Green shadows? Where?

Most of all, it's simply a great game. I stopped looking at the textures up close and just focused on the world in overall and noticed it looks beautiful and plays great. The ragdoll physics are probably the best I've seen so far, next to Left4Dead.

Are the textures ugly as hell up close? Sure they are. Does it mean Rage uses bad technology? Nope. Megatexture or virtual texturing is a paradise for artists. So maybe it wasn't used to its full potential in Rage, possibly thanks to focusing on consoles' hardware. Was the PC version neglected? Yup. However, the 'detail texturing' update did introduce bicubic texture filtering which is kind of new in 3D games.Is the gameplay flawless? Of course not. There's a lot of unnecessary and gameplay mechanics, invisible walls, etc.... but it's fun!

Am I a "Rage defender"? Sure, the game needs defending against opinions of people who saw only videos and screenshots of walls.

by some weirdos who think RAGE was some visual revolutionary game.. makes me sick and scoff at the retardedness the online community often displays.

Or maybe they just have a different opinion????????

Opinions are overrated. Someone can tell you he believes in a talking snake because, in his opinion, it's a very probable thing.

There are objective facts that should always be considered before respecting an opinion or waving it off as utter bullshit. It's scientifically impossible for snakes to talk, so you can think it's a probable thing.. but that makes you a misguided, deluded person and your opinion should be considered as such.

Then we have RAGE and people who say it was a beautiful looking game. Beautiful enough to bring it up in this discussion. But when we lay out the facts of the graphical failures, you can either put your head up your ass and ignore them.. or see the obective fact -- nothing subjective about it! -- that said failures indeed make RAGE a cesspit of crap.

Granted, what RAGE does best is deceive. Screenshots look good (as long as you force yourself not to look at the smudged, nearby textures. But we all know what happened if you approached that vehicle in the second screenshot, or the pillar in the first: some incoherent mess you'd approach, a.. thing.. with low resolution horror splattered upon it. Or you'd turn your mouse too quickly, seeing the textures being loaded in like being painted before you by a retard god. But that's not all! You'd kill your first enemy and realize there's no physics engine to speak of and the corpse would clip through a wall after it's pre-animated fall.

I suddenly realize that some of you RAGE defenders may not have played the game at all but only watched screenshots just to have a say in the discussion at hand. Tell me, is this the case?

Unbelievable. Of all the games in the last few years, RAGE comes to mind INSTANTLY when I have to think of the most abysmal looking game.

Seeing how this subject, with that beautiful Witcher 3 (?) screenshot, somehow got tainted by some weirdos who think RAGE was some visual revolutionary game.. makes me sick and scoff at the retardedness the online community often displays.

saluk wrote on Feb 2, 2013, 16:59:but the environment in that witcher shot still looks more patterny and gamey than most of the RAGE environments if you aren't looking at any objects up close.

Yep, hardly seeing any repeating textures in RAGE was a breath of fresh air.I remember looking down from really elevated positions and being able to see a square kilometer of game world without spotting one repeating texture.Quite a feat by Carmack if you ask me.

saluk wrote on Feb 2, 2013, 16:59:Rage looks neither good nor bad. Some aspects of it look great and are a huge improvement, other aspects look horrible and are worse than most games out in the last 10 years.

Rage looks neither good nor bad. Some aspects of it look great and are a huge improvement, other aspects look horrible and are worse than most games out in the last 10 years. It's all on where your focus is. That farcry shot to me for instance looks pretty bad, because you can see the pattern. It doesn't look like a real place at all. The Rage shot also looks pretty bad, because none of the individual elements look realistic. But as a place it looks more real and alive.

I'm not that happy with either, and we've come a long way with the far cry approach in making environments look more organic - but the environment in that witcher shot still looks more patterny and gamey than most of the RAGE environments if you aren't looking at any objects up close.

Quinn wrote on Feb 2, 2013, 06:58:You don't even seem to understand the point of analogies, seeing how dumb your reply was to ItBurn's, so I'll just slowly back away from this discussion.

It wasn't an analogy, it was cheap demagogy. Sarcasm, that big misunderstood.

I just wonder what you raging people play for real, I bet that despite all the bitching, you play all those "terrible" games when no one sees you. What I've learnt is that the games you use for comparison along the "bad" ones, aren't that good either, sometimes even worse.

Demagogy!? Because he used a chick or something? Sorry but you're talking piss.

The rest you said I shouldn't even honor with a reply. But for the hell of it... I'm not cognitively comparing RAGE with anything other than what I'm used to and expecting in the latest games in the genre. I expect proper physics; deceivingly pretty textures from afar somehow remaining as sharp and pretty up close; no texture pop-ins; dynamic shadows instead of static, and the list goes on.

Quinn wrote on Feb 2, 2013, 06:58:You don't even seem to understand the point of analogies, seeing how dumb your reply was to ItBurn's, so I'll just slowly back away from this discussion.

It wasn't an analogy, it was cheap demagogy. Sarcasm, that big misunderstood.

I just wonder what you raging people play for real, I bet that despite all the bitching, you play all those "terrible" games when no one sees you. What I've learnt is that the games you use for comparison along the "bad" ones, aren't that good either, sometimes even worse.

pagb wrote on Feb 1, 2013, 20:42:Enough with it already, rage looks good. If you like to stare to the walls and touch them with your nose in your games, then you're doing it wrong.

You know when you see a really hot girl from far away, but when you start getting close you see how wrong you were? You pagb, would stick to your first assumption and date her, you're a true gentleman

Yeah, because girls also use 1gb of VRAM and need to be toned down to run on everyone's eyes.

Quinn wrote on Feb 2, 2013, 06:01:What an airstrike of bullshit. RAGE looks good my ass. Shadows look moreso green than black, and they are static instead of dynamic. There's hardly a physics engine to speak of and you don't need to bite a wall to see how fucking abysmal the textures are up close.

RAGE looks bad, and if you disagree.. you're simply easily satisfied/excited and don't look at the fact objectively.

If you think RAGE looks bad, either RAGE must be the worst game you've ever seen or you need your eyes checked.

What an airstrike of bullshit. RAGE looks good my ass. Shadows look moreso green than black, and they are static instead of dynamic. There's hardly a physics engine to speak of and you don't need to bite a wall to see how fucking abysmal the textures are up close.

RAGE looks bad, and if you disagree.. you're simply easily satisfied/excited and don't look at the fact objectively.

RAGE is stunning to look at.If you go in and try to lick all the objects and walls in the game, then you're going to see some bad res textures. if you take a step back and look at the big picture, it's breathtaking, visually.The on-foot combat is fun as hell, too.Granted, I've only played about 15% of the game yet.